Another school season is upon us and Western School Division (WSD) has a projected enrollment growth rate of around 5% this year over last year.

"It's something that we are seeing and shouldn't be surprised with. In lots of areas, certainly our own city has a very aggressive immigration initiative and population initiative they're working on," explained WSD Superintendent Stephen Ross. "Both in the province and country, we know that both of these areas are looking to grow the area through immigration as well. We are certainly seeing a lot of people move into South Central Manitoba and aren't the only place that is seeing some growth."

Ross explained each year they plan for roughly 2.5-3% growth and to have surpassed that margin already and it continues to increase is causing some concerns within the Division. Ross noted they've also been told to expect continued and consistent growth throughout the entire year.

With this growth, the Division has roughly 90-100 more students than last year and Ross stated that number is continuing to grow all the time."With two new classroom spaces. You can tell that the only alternative is to actually make larger classes. We don't have additional space to put kids in anywhere else," said Ross.

According to Ross, larger classrooms sizes means there could be less one-on-one time for each student.

At this time the Division doesn't have any more classrooms available, stated Ross. He added due to the Province making their approval for portables later in the spring, WSD's two new portables will not arrive for the start of the school year.

"Actually both of our early year's schools are going to have classes start in school libraries. That's going to be a challenge," said Ross. "We hope to have those portables in place sometime maybe in late September. We're working hard to make sure we can get kids in there as quick as we can once we've received them."

This fall one out of every three Early Years students will start school in a portable classroom. The division turned a computer lab in the middle school into a classroom, which is their third in recent years, to make an extra class at Ecole Morden Middle School. Ross explained, otherwise students in the middle school would also have to start the school year in a portable.

The two portable classrooms the Division is waiting on will go to Minnewasta and Maple Leaf School.

"The real thing is that we need a new school now. We did tell Government quite a number of years ago that we needed to open a new school in September of 2018. That would be outside side of that," explained Ross. "At this time we don't know if a new school is going to be coming. I had written to the Deputy Minister at the start of August to get an update from him on the status of where things are at. I haven't had a reply yet from the Deputy Minister (as of August 30th). Additional portable classrooms are just an expensive band-aid they're not the long term solution."

Ross continued and said the Division's focus and concern are for their students. He noted WSD students perform really well academically against their provincial peers and wouldn't want their learning to be impacted because of space issues.

"We are genuinely concerned for the well being of our students and we do worry, because our students do well provincially against their peers and that we are good problem solvers to try and avoid issues for them. That sometimes the decision makers in Winnipeg don't worry about us and think we have everything under control," said Ross. "That quiet kid in the back of the class, they need attention too. We think our students are just as important as the ones in Winnipeg, Brandon, and even Neepawa. Our goal in the Division is to not get our students to the provincial average. It's to raise that bar, be the leader that other divisions are aspiring to be. Our kids don't deserve anything less. The space issues can impact and we are concerned that they are going to impact the student of achievement of our kids. That's our biggest worry."